Spotify recently launched in South Africa, so I decided to try it out. I’ve been reasonably happy with Google Music up until this point, but with Spotify being the music streaming service, I felt it was worth seeing if I’d been missing out or not. So I signed up for the 30-day premium trial and made some comparisons to Google Music, culminating in this post.
Spotify’s intended experience is clearly through the desktop application, of which versions exist for Windows, Mac and Linux. There’s also a web...
Here’s something I find software increasingly doing that irritates me a little bit: the startup project wizard. For an example, look at just modern programming IDEs like PyCharm, RAD gamedev tools like Unity and GameMaker Studio and even newer versions of the pentesting-focused HTTP proxy tool Burpsuite. Open any of these programs and you’ll be greeted by a project wizard.
Before you can actually use the program to do any programming/gamedev/traffic interception/etc, you have to go through a bunch of menus to create a new project with...
“An RSS feed? That’s so 2007!”
“Well then what do you suggest instead?”
“Everyone gets their updates through their Facebook feeds these days! Just make a Facebook page!”
“That sounds great! Then half of my subscribers will see half of my updates, during weeks in which Zuckerberg chooses to weigh the algorithms more towards news and less towards friends’ photos. Also everyone has to have a Facebook account.”
“Yeah, okay, point made. Twitter is better anyway: it’s totally public, doesn’t force people to sign in to see feeds, and its feeds aren’t subject to...
As anyone at all exposed to the internet will know by now, Apple has removed the 3.5mm audio jack from the new iPhone that’s coming out. This has been the cause of much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but will probably not be the cause of a significant drop in iPhone sales. Much of the prevailing attitude appears to be that now that the great gods at One Infinite Loop have removed the audio jack, people will just have to go on living without it, shouldering the burden of not...
My immediate reaction to seeing yet another call from some website, shopping chain or mall to please install their app for all of these amazing benefits and indispensable features is to wonder just how many narrow-purpose apps any given person can have on their phone and use regularly.
Just think about your own app usage – there’s the general stuff like your alarm, calendar, email, browser, chat (i.e. WhatsApp), phone (haha), SMS, and maybe a torch or note-taking app depending on your needs. That...
